Skip to
by socioNycto
Summary: JtHM. The things he can't do right anymore have to do with normal. An unreliable narrator does his best. Johnny-centric.


I didn't know what I was doing.

I swear.

-

Skip to me crushing a fly beneath my thumb. Skip to me pulling its wings off.

Skip to me smearing green on the wall because I've got nothing better to do.

-

The things I don't understand anymore these days have to do with normal. Like walking. I don't think I can walk right. Or stabbing. What's the safe, correct, FDA-approved procedure for stabbing someone in the gut? For twisting to make sure it takes or wrenching up to make sure it kills? For making it come out the other side of their body to make sure they're never stupid again? Skip to me wandering a department store at four in the morning because I've got nothing better to do.

Skip to me walking wrong.

Skip to employees having sex in the men's bathroom.

Skip to dead employees.

-

In the beginning, there were people. Lots of people. People doing people things. People doing so _many _people things, they lost track of days. People bored out of their minds and people living without really being aware of it. People aware, but not that bothered.

I think I might have been one of them.

But something happened and somehow, suddenly I wasn't.

Things have always come at me like they're covered in smoke, so that's how I'll write it here. You'll skip from thought to thought, never finishing anything completely. Always getting that empty feeling in your stomach like you've missed something important. Fair is fair.

-

"I don't know," she says. "Wouldn't it only seem like a bad thing from someone else's point of view?"

My breath reeks, and I don't even have to hold my hand to my mouth to smell it.

"I mean, they all act somewhat lobotomized, but…they're happy, right?"

Devi, female that she is, glares daggers at a blonde who's too wrapped up in her own reflection to notice.

"How do you think she gets her hair like that? It's fucking _architectural_."

God. I didn't shower this morning. I can _feel_ the grease.

"Nny? What do you think?"

I don't want to think.

I say: "They probably know, deep down. That's the sad part. They remember vaguely that they used to be better, but they'll never again be what they once were."

Devi pokes her hair. "What, like zombies?"

God damn it. "Yeah. Zombies."

-

It's hard for me to focus, sometimes. My brain gets skittish and I start thinking about other things. Like killing. I think about killing a lot.

-

Skip to the first time I killed somebody. Actually, that might be misleading. I don't remember the first time specifically, but I can tell you it was at a mall, that it was a Friday, and that it might have been the single most horrible moment of my entire life. Killing gets progressively better, you understand. It's like toasting a guitar…or something.

He'd been saying things to me all afternoon, following me from the bookstore to the record store to the food court for some tacos, all the way just…talking.

"Hey, faggot boy, I've got something for you, if you're into it. Hey little anorexic faggot boy, you look like you could use a nice fuck. I know you've been looking at me. Hey."

I grabbed the back of his head, threaded my fingers through his hair to get a good grip, only it was so greasy that it didn't make a bit of difference. The guy was screaming, but all I could hear was television static. I slammed his head into the side of the fountain at the center of the mall, the one underneath the huge skylight that in all practicality becomes a giant magnifying glass with which the sky melts us like ants on a hill. His forehead is slippery with sweat from the sun and sticky with blood from the fountain, but he's still alive. Still squirming.

I say some stuff I don't remember. I'm getting frustrated now. Over and over I slam his head into the fountain, now a huge chunk of it is missing and the blood's getting everywhere, but he's still not dead. Pieces of his skull are sticking out of his brain, he's tearing at my hands but can't get a good grip on them because of the blood and he's _still not fucking dead._

Finally, he lays still. Exhausted now, I fall to the floor beside him, breathing hard. The minutes tick by.

A sticky sort of rasping, sucking noise happens, like a low-powered vacuum wand stuck partway into a glass of orange juice. I glance over to my friend in surprise, but just to be sure, I check his pulse.

His neck vertebrae are showing from the several times I missed his head and instead slammed something a bit lower into the fountain's edge. In fact, it's almost snapped in two. His head itself is unrecognizable as a human's, the battered bits of brains having long ago been strewn both on the ground and into the fountain, where a few adventurous koi were now nibbling on them. His hands and arms and chest are covered with both his blood and mine, his fingernails are jagged and broken from clawing at my hands to get me to stop. (That's where my blood came from.) Cautiously navigating my way through all this, I check his pulse.

It takes me a full three seconds to realize his heart's still beating.

-

Skip to I'm all by myself.

The television lies before me, raised on some kind of dais, its very own Mt. Olympus, hiding in plain sight like some crouching god. The air here is so dirty it makes me hack and wheeze. My guess is it doesn't help that I'm lying on what may be the filthiest shag rug in existence, either.

If you asked me, I couldn't tell you how my house got so decayed. The floor alone is so thick with dried and partaway-dried bodily fluids that it's almost impossible to walk, the hardwood seems to suck your foot in with every step. The walls are slowly turning in on themselves. The stench is unimaginable.

God. It's so bad here I don't even want to kill myself.

-

I guess I just grew up in the wrong generation. The hippies had Woodstock, the hipsters had, well, Woodstock…but what did we get? A war and a dead culture and a dead planet. That's it. That's everything this generation is going to stand for: a series of raised hopes and miserable letdowns.

-

"So what do you think, Nny?" she asks, her lower lip stuck out in thought. "Up or down?" I don't answer, trying to avoid this minefield entirely.

"Definitely up," Tenna offers from across the room. "When you have it down, you look like a California prostitute." Spooky squeaks emphatically.

"Thank you, Tenna." Devi says, eyes narrowed. "Nny? What do _you_ think?"

"Up sounds nice," I offer, trying to stay as neutral as possible. "I'm not sure about the California prostitute thing, but…" I trail off. There's something wrong.

"Nny? Nny, are you okay?" Devi sounds worried as she leans in, her dried rose perfume invading my every sense. I can seriously taste it, and it burns.

"Mr. Murder Man looks paler than usual," Tenna says in singsong, tossing Spooky from one hand to the other. "Maybe Mr. Murder Man's caught Measles!"

"Nny?" I look up.

"So what do you think, Nny?" she asks, her lower lip stuck out in thought. "Up or down?" I don't answer; my mind has become spaghetti.

"Definitely up," Tenna offers from across the room. "When you have it down, you look like a California prostitute." Spooky squeaks omnisciently.

"Thank you, Tenna." Devi says, eyes narrowed. "Nny? What do _you _think?"

"…" I can't say anything because I'm lying on the floor convulsing.

"I guess you guys've won me over then," she says teasingly, bunching her hair up on top of her head. "Tenna, hand me a bobby pin, would you?" She steps over me on her way.

-

In the dark, things are less real. A shadow moves and you can never tell if it's a cat or your head or that last pathetic person who has finally come to kill you. You look at a city in the distance and see only the great, quivering tentacles of some unfathomable beast. It's not that I hate the dark. I'm just not that I'm not too fond of it. I think I'm more sane in the light, anyway.

-

Skip to me walking wrong.

Skip to woman hitting her child for making noise.

Skip to dead woman.

-

I wonder, as I glance around this small country of a mall, if maybe some of these people don't deserve to live. If the world would be better without them. If maybe God would thank their murderer.

A flash of light.

All the color goes out of the moment.

Is this what they call a revelation?

They're really no better than animals, I think, pacing, books and candy left forgotten on the bench behind me. They go through their days like ants, never thinking, following only variations on a theme, subservient to their leader. They give nothing back. They only take, they feed on each other, have sex with each other, maybe not like ants but legless ants gone crazy and parasitic, taking great big heaping bites of each other's heads without realizing it and congealing into this massive ball of writhing, fucking, unknowing, hopeless _death_… the worst kind of death. Head death. They're a skyscraper in a prairie. Ink on your shirt. Pop music. Grape-flavored freezies. Daytime television. A wax museum of cable workers and porn stars and accountants and teachers, frozen in time, never even attempting to rise above their horrid forms, forever stuck like a car with its tires slashed or a dog with no legs. Just…eyesores.

Terrified and exhilarated rapturous all at once, I stop for a moment and look at my hands.

All it would take would be one girl with a gardening hose or one boy with a magnifying glass. So easy. Just one…little…push…

Skip to me slamming a man's head into the edge of a fountain.

Skip to I finally kill him.

Skip to the world's a better place.

I didn't know what I was doing, I swear.


End file.
